


Untaken Roads

by Tassos



Series: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow [5]
Category: Farscape, Stargate Atlantis, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 11:38:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tassos/pseuds/Tassos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A <i>Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow</i> ficlet.  Mid Part 1. Two men converged in a yellow wood . . .</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untaken Roads

**Author's Note:**

> Could be considered a mini AU of T3, Part 1. Could be considered part of the story. It's all in how you look at it. Title adapted from Robert Frost. For kernezelda and cofax7.

  
Some guy that was not Sam was staring at him when Dean woke up. He blinked, then realized some guy that was not Sam was staring at him – wrongwrongwrong – with a jolt of adrenaline that quickly morphed into shooting pain behind his eyeballs and muscle cramps that seized and left him sprawling when he tried to scramble to his feet. Dean stared at the sunny sky and tried to breathe, helpless, some guy just out of view.

Where the hell was his shotgun? His fingers scrabbled to his sides, searching.

And Sam? Where the hell was Sam?

“Hey, you’re awake,” said the guy cheerfully. “I was beginning to wonder. Still am actually because of the jeans, but I’m not picky right now.”

Dean ignored him because, Christ, he hurt. And why was there a fucking sky above him, because he knew with absolute certainty that when he’d gone down in the tussle – that had taken place at night, indoors, and with his brother watching his back – he hadn’t hit his head nearly hard enough to knock himself out. He should have been shaking it off and rolling to his feet about now, not waking up in a clearing with a raging headache – okay, maybe a headache – and some strange guy, spirit, or monster staring at him. Yeah, not good.

Dean tried sitting up again, slower and with one eye out for movement from his spectator who he was sure was just waiting to kick him down again. Every muscle in his body protested the movement, telling him in no uncertain terms that getting to his knife was way more effort than it was worth. The guy made no move to help, which was hardly a good sign but still somewhat reassuring. That is, it was until Dean’s head started to clear and he got a look at him.

“How’s your head? Anvil fall on it?”

Turned out the wild man crouching beside him jabbering was far more unsettling than a random person stumbling over him and rushing to be helpful. The guy had psycho killer written all over him. A couple days growth of beard covered his cheeks to match the hair curling over his ears in a haircut worse than Sam’s. Dirt was worked into his skin, speaking of hard living as loudly as his thick and battered coat. Dean couldn’t tell if he had a gun hidden in its folds and hoped to hell he didn’t because otherwise he was toast. Getting to his knife might be worth the pain after all.

"Who the hell are you?” he asked, hating the pant in his breathing. So far there had been no sudden movements, and the guy’s hands were in plain view hanging between his knees. He was the only one around as far as Dean could tell, only one in a lot of miles if the trees and brush and happy forest noises were anything to go by. “And where the hell are we?” he added, looking back at the wild man.

The guy blinked and tilted his head slightly. “John,” he said. “I don’t know where we are. Doesn’t really matter. Might have a name, might not. I’m thinking of calling it Land of the Random Bodies. What do you think? Catchy ring to it?” He grinned.

His opinion of the name and the situation at large must have showed on his face because the guy just grinned wider and said, “Not creepy enough, huh? We could go with something classic.”

Dean shifted and winced as he pulled his legs up, first the right then the left. He didn’t need a hospital, thank God, but he felt like he’d taken a beating with a bat. He eyed the guy hoping he wouldn’t need to run. He could probably take him on a good day, which right now was so not. “You know what State were in? Or what happened to me?” he asked, not really expecting an answer. But you never knew. Sometimes crazy people answered if you asked them straight up. “Anyone else around, tall guy maybe? Looks like Bigfoot?” Sam had to be around here somewhere, he had to be, otherwise Dean was well and truly screwed. Or this could be another mind-meld thing like the djinn. It could be faeries, it could be pouka. He eyed John again, not sure what he should be looking for. “You have anything to do with how I got here?” he asked.

“Nope,” said the guy rising to his feet, smooth and easy. “You kinda just appeared in front of me.” The long lines of his coat revealed black leather pants that were sagging off his hips and a shirt that was only about half original material. A bag was slung across his chest and a pair of knives was tucked into his belt within easy reach, but John didn’t seem to be looking for a fight, hadn’t made a move, but that could be a distraction.

“Appeared, huh?” said Dean, thinking John here really was crazy if he was so calm about it. Or he was lying. Most likely he was the reason he was here at all. “Out of thin air.”

“Poof.” John exploded his fingers as he said it, and Dean wasn’t sure whether to take it literally or not. From the twitching of the guy’s lips, he guessed not. Dean was not amused. The bastard had him out here in the middle of nowhere, beat to hell and was laughing at him, and it was pissing Dean off.

“And you what, decided to sit down and wait till I woke up?” Dean asked. He shoved himself to his feet, pointedly ignoring the pain and John’s thumbs hooked easily beside his knives because what the fuck! Where was Sam? Why the hell was he in the middle of the goddamn woods? And why the hell did he feel like he got hit by a truck? “What the hell did you do to me?”

John shrugged, calm and creepy and so full of shit his eyes should have been brown. “Nothing. Like I said, you just appeared.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that you had nothing to do with this?” Dean said, instantly regretting the loudness of his voice and staggering under the stabbing eye-pain.

“Calm down, kid,” John stepped forward, catching his elbow to steady him. Dean twisted his wrist, grabbed John and yanked him close.

“Where am I, and where’s my brother?” he hissed.

John’s arm flexed beneath Dean’s hand, the only acknowledgement he gave of Dean in his face. “I don’t. Know,” said John, shoving him back, but gently. He left his hand on Dean’s arm until he wouldn’t keel over. It was patronizing was what it was, but Dean was in fact too weak to do a thing about it.

“Dammit!” He looked around again, hoping to see something. “You don’t know where we are?” he asked again. “And you had nothing to do with me appearing here out of thin air?” Phone. His phone had to be on him somewhere. Dean patted around until he found it, but there was no service.

John was staring at him again, staring at his phone. “It could have been bodysnatchers. I’m still not ruling out the possibility of hallucination.”

Dean blinked. “Excuse me?”

Suddenly, John grinned again, wide and bright with a little chuckle behind it that was more unsettling than the staring. “Well, you are a little see-through.”

“Wha-” Dean looked down at himself, and now that John had mentioned it, he could see the hint of the outline of the ground through his own arm. It was faint but there. Even his phone was see-through. “What the hell?!” As if this situation was not bad enough, now it had gone into royally fucked up territory. Last time something like this had happened, he’d been dying and . . . “Sam!” Dean shouted to the sky. “Sam!” Nothing but the empty silence of the woods. Goddammit. Dean couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t.

“We’re all alone, kid,” said John softly, the humor gone.

“Quit calling me ‘kid’,” Dean snapped, unnerved and unable to stop staring at himself. Staring through himself. Visions of Back to the Future and mind games spiraling through his mental dictionary trying to get a handle on what was going on and coming up blank. He wasn’t dead. It was just him, John, and the wilderness. No Sam. Nothing familiar. He’d gone down in a fight, woken up in Wonderland, and he’d lost Sam. And he wasn’t dead. He only hoped John hadn’t done this because Dean was all alone with him, no reception, no brother. Possibly dead.

“Don’t have much else to call you, Casper,” said John.

Dean paused in looking through himself long enough to give John a glare that had him holding up his hands in protest. “Am I dead!?” he shouted, getting in John’s face again.

“Whoa there,” said John deceptively soft, deftly stepping away. Like something that could get hurt. Knowing that made Dean feel better, a little less like a puppet being yanked around. “No need to get upset.” John had put a good arms length between them. “I have no idea if you’re dead or not. You’re doing a fair impression of alive. That is, of course, if you’re even real.”

“I’m real,” said Dean. He took a deep breath, tried to get a hold of himself. If John hadn’t brought him here, what had?

“Yeah, sure. You’re real. What do you think, Harv?” John cocked his head, listening to something that only he could hear, chuckling. “Well you’ve got the Masked Man stumped,” he said after a minute. “If you’re a hallucination, he swears you’re not mine.”

Dean swallowed hard. John was bugfuck nuts. Certifiable.

But the fact was that Dean was here, wherever here was, with him. If he was a creature, he was none like any Dean had ever heard of, and right now it didn’t matter. With woods all around, John was his only lead, so damned or not, Dean was gonna have to stick with him. Dead or a ghost or a whatever. Didn’t matter. What mattered was figuring this out. It wasn’t a hell of a choice and given that nothing around him was remotely familiar, not even the leaves on the trees, Dean figured he was bettor off not by his lonesome.

“So what’s your name, kid?”

“Don’t call me kid,” said Dean again, but it was a token protest. John just gave him a look that clearly said to give him another option. “Dean. My name’s Dean.”

“Nice to meet you, Dean,” said John softly with a nod that was a lot closer to sympathetic than Dean was entirely comfortable with. “C’mon. I’m going this way.” John gestured toward the trees and started walking. Dean watched for a moment but followed John in the end and tried to ignore the itch of worry slithering through him. Deciding to stick with John didn’t loosen the clench in his gut telling him something was deeply wrong.

The walk was creepy and it was more than the leaves. The trees weren’t tall enough for one, making Dean feel like they were walking through a low ceilinged house, and the birds sounded off somehow. John wasn’t following a trail, instead tracing the topography through the underbrush. Worse, he knocked aside branches that snapped back in Dean’s mostly corporeal face. Apparently being only a little bit see-through meant most of him was there to touch. “Hey!” Dean called after the third one, but John ignored him, didn’t even slow down. “Hey!” he tried again. “Where’re we going?”

“Forward,” John called back. “Only way to go. One foot in front of the other.”

Dean grit his teeth at the non answer. “Well, where are we going forward to?”

“Through the woods, over the hill, to grandma’a house we go,” John sang. “Where she’ll feed us cookies and milk and Aunt Ruth’s fruitcake and coddle us in silk.” He laughed, delighted with himself. “I can’t believe I miss her fruitcake. I don’t know what all she put in it. Orange peels, cranberries, cherries, I think dried apricots and pears too. Never did like raisins though, so she skipped those. Soaked in about a pint too much of rum. Put hair on your chest.” He paused and turned back toward Dean over his shoulder.

“You like fruitcake?”

“Never had it,” said Dean blinking at the sudden question.

John shook his head. “Man, you are missing out,” he said, resuming the hike. “You’d probably hate Aunt Ruth’s. No one outside the family could ever stand it. I think the first time I got drunk was because of that fruitcake. Must have been nine or ten years old. My mom wouldn’t let me have any but I was old enough then to not get caught stealing a couple slices. It had kick to it, you know?”

John kept talking like the floodgates had been opened, about the fruitcake, about other desserts, making Dean hungry just listening to him. He talked about his mom and the best things she made, family picnics, cousins and touch football. He asked if Dean had ever played, if he’d ever tried this or done that. Details of a life like those Dean had only ever looked in on. There was something wistful in his voice that convinced Dean the longer John talked that he was as much a victim as Dean was. When he asked if Dean’s mom ever made pie to die for too, it was an innocent question. “My mom’s dead,” Dean said.

John nodded. “My mom’s dead too,” he said simply. “Cancer. Took her three years to go and I wasn’t even there at the end. The planet’s not dead is it?”

“What?”

“Earth.”

“It was fine when I left,” said Dean a little uncertainly, wondering where this was going, where he’d lost track of the conversation, why John was asking about Earth as if –

John actually stopped and turned back again. He waited for Dean to catch up to him, this smile on his face that was sad and something else that reflected wetly in his eyes. “It is, huh? Damn. Sometimes I wonder, I think what if . . .”

Haunted. Lost. As Dean stared at him, it was as if he were suddenly seeing John for the first time again, but this time as a man and not a threat. A man pared down to bone with nothing more than what he carried, two knives, and voices locked up in his head. “What happened to you?” asked Dean quietly.

The question broke whatever spell John had fallen into and when he looked at Dean he was seeing Dean. “What didn’t?” he replied. “I fell down the rabbit hole and kept falling and falling. And when I thought I’d found my feet, I fell again. New rules, new terrors.” He shook his head and stared off into the distance. “But alone this time.”

“How long?”

“Since I left Earth, or since I landed in this part of the universe?”

“Left?” There suddenly didn’t seem to be any air around. Dean couldn’t have heard that right; he didn’t mean . . . They were under hill or twisted in one of their minds. But Dean couldn’t help but look at the trees that were too short, the leaves that were nothing like he’d ever seen. It didn’t make sense. It just didn’t.

“Welcome to the rest of the universe.”

* * *

There was a squirrel type thing on the spit that John couldn’t tear his eyes away from. He was so hungry he was ready to eat it raw. Dean sat across the fire from him. He seemed to be over his freak out and into contemplating Life, the Universe, and Everything by staring into the fire. He still didn’t believe in other planets, convinced it was just an alternate reality, and John wasn’t sure he was wrong there either. The argument had lasted to the traps and Dean still didn’t believe him about the aliens, thought he was crazy. It was a reaction that was so familiar that it made John’s chest ache.

Or Dean could have been hungry too, staring at the squirrel thing as avidly as John. He wondered if being transparent would make Dean unable to eat anything solid. John hoped so, as ungenerous a thought that was, because he didn’t want to go to sleep hungry. He really wanted all of the squirrel thing to himself; hunger was a constant and cruel companion, and John was already cutting it close with this planet. The ruins he’d found were farther away than was strictly safe from the Wormhole Ouroboros, and getting back would cut into the time he usually allotted for error in his estimated time of Wraith arrival.

“So you have a brother?” he asked to keep his mind from borrowing trouble. He wondered if he should mention the Wraith to Dean.

“Yeah.” Dean glanced up at him. “He was with me when I went down.”

“When you hit your head? How’d that happen?”

“Fight.” The word was clipped short, Dean mostly ignoring John still while his brain tried to wrap around the constellations he didn’t recognize. John didn’t mind or really care about his existential grief. He hadn’t talked to anyone besides Harvey in so long it was a wonder he could read the kid at all, but he knew that wallowing wouldn’t help. Besides it wasn’t everyday that a stranger from Earth crossed his path. What he couldn’t figure out, however, was how someone was fucking with him, here, where he’d seen plenty of people in varying states of primitive, but no other aliens than the Wraith. And John was pretty sure the Wraith just wanted to beat the crap out of him. This mind games dren wasn’t their style. More Harvey’s really, but he’d sworn on the dumpster that it wasn’t him, and John was pretty sure he wasn’t lying.

“The kind you started, or the kind he started?” he asked, because really, he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Dean’s eyes flickered again. “The kind we were fighting against something else.”

“Thing?” That was interesting.

“Look –” Dean started.

“Don’t hold out on me,” John interrupted. “You’re the only conversation in this neck of the woods, if you hadn’t noticed. And whether you believe it or not, the woods happen to be in a galaxy far, far away.” He waved a hand to convey the ‘or something’ in that statement since there sure as hell weren’t any handy droids or spaceships around either. Man what he wouldn’t give for a ship. His kingdom.

_You don’t have a kingdom, said Harvey sulkily._

Dean eyed him, and John could practically see the weighing back and forth he was doing, but that could just have been Harvey lounging on one of the scales. John dropped a feather on the other side and chuckled when Harvey crashed to the ground with a clatter.

“What?”

“Nothing. You were telling me about the fight.”

“Right,” said Dean slowly, but then he shrugged and decided to go for broke. “We were fighting a ghost.”

“A ghost,” John repeated, not sure if Dean was pulling his leg or not. But Dean had that look about him, as if he didn’t expect John to believe him, nothing like he was talking out of his ass. And all things considered, who was John not to believe him?

“Why were you fighting the ghost?”

“It’s what we do,” said Dean, relaxing enough to pick up a stick and poke the fire.

“You and your brother?”

“It’s kind of the family business.”

“Some business.”

Dean shrugged. “We help a lot of people.”

John could understand that. If you could help, you should, but it didn’t sound like something that paid the bills. And fighting ghosts was no picnic either, not if the battle readiness, hair trigger finger, and sheer threat Dean exuded without noticing it was anything to go by. He was a fighter, a warrior, as sure as Aeryn and D’argo were. “You been doing it long?”

Dean paused but said, “My whole life.”

John glanced at Dean sideways at that, taking in his stubble and leather jacket. He was young still, John thought, a good ten years younger than him. He poked the squirrel thing to see if it was ready and to avoid thinking of a little girl, a part of a unit, a company, a regiment of kids drilling and training on a fake landscape in the middle of space.

“Never thought of doing anything else?”

And like that Dean shut down. Eyes shuttered, breath hitched, sayonara. “No.” Game over.

John put his attention back on dinner and pulled the squirrel thing off the fire. He was starving and trying not to examine how close to the truth that turn of phrase was. The smell alone was making him heady. “You want some?”

The question seemed to surprise Dean, and he shook his head. “Not hungry.” He made a face. “Don’t want to risk food,” he amended after a moment.

John needed no further encouragement to rip into the squirrel thing, ignoring the look on Dean’s face as he watched him eat. Shabby coat or not, the kid didn’t look like he knew what real hunger was. John was glad he didn’t, because it sucked, but at the same time he couldn’t help resenting it, just a bit. Resented also that Dean was not all there, that part of him was held back, could probably go back. Leave this random planet with the Wraith waiting on the other side of the horizon. Let it be nothing more than a bad dream. John had no such luxury, and it was killing him day by day.

“Don’t you get tired?” he asked, mouth full and meal half eaten already.

“Of what?”

“Of fighting.”

This time when Dean caught his eye, it was all there, open as a book, a picture worth a thousand thousand words. His gaze seared through John’s soul and he knew – he knew – that Dean had thought of it. Walking away, giving in, letting go of everything. Oblivion. Rest.

_There’s no rest for the wicked._

No rest when there’s something worth fighting for.

John half smiled. “Guess not,” he half whispered, getting a bark of laughter in return. He wondered what Dean had seen written in his own face.

“We help a lot of people,” Dean repeated softly, a mantra if John had ever heard one. “Walking away is just . . . I couldn’t live with myself, you know?”

John had no answer he could voice. Dean could live with it. But he’d hate himself for it, always wonder what if . . . All he said was, “Yeah,” sending a silent prayer to the universe that this kid never learned what he was truly capable of.

“Do you have any family?” Dean asked so unexpectedly that John almost missed the question. The squirrel thing was nothing but bones now, scattered at his feet where he dropped them. He didn’t know how to answer.

“I’ve got two sisters and my dad,” he finally said. “Back on Earth.” A lifetime ago. “And on Moya . . .” But none of them were there anymore. “Aeryn,” he heard himself say. “Aeryn’s pregnant. Or was. It’s been . . .” But John didn’t even know anymore.

_Eight months, Harvey whispered, showing him the calendar hidden under the desk. It’s August._

“I’m sorry,” said Dean, simply and heartfelt. John didn’t add that most days she was the only reason he didn’t roll over and let the Wraith take him. He didn’t need to.

“Your brother will be looking for you?”

“Sam. Yeah.” Certain.

John wondered if he’d ever had faith like that. If he had, he couldn’t remember what it felt like. “If I had a pair of ruby slippers,” he started and Dean smiled, a real smile that made it to his eyes making him look even younger than he already did.

“Yeah, well, if I had a nickel for every time I got my ass in a mess that Sam had to save me from – well, I’d still have to run scams, but maybe I wouldn’t have to pay for gas.” He shook his head ruefully. “I still can’t believe this. Any of this.” He nodded toward the trees to encompass everything.

John met his intense gaze, just this side of desperate. Saw the unspoken, ‘I can’t stay here’ as loud as if the words had been set free. He had to look away because he understood, completely and utterly, and it hurt to see that mix of hope and fear. John couldn’t fathom this not being his life. “Shit happens,” he said.

“Yeah,” Dean sighed, the weight of knowing it in his bones, and he was too young. Too damn young and too far from safety, from where he should be. Too far from his brother who was coming to save him.

_God works in mysterious ways, Harvey whispered._

John wondered if Dean was here for him or if he was here for Dean.

I don’t believe in God, he said.

_I know. But sometimes you want to._

John pulled his coat tighter around himself and couldn’t answer. Harvey knew the answer anyway. Dean stared at the fire again, unreadable in the flickering light that glinted off the stones behind him.

“You think –” Dean stopped before he started.

“I think you got a better chance than me,” John answered him anyway. “You’re not all here, remember? Might not be really here at all.”

“This is too freaky for words,” said Dean, running a hand through his hair. “Sam’s probably going crazy by now,” he added in an almost whisper.

John wanted to tell him that it would be okay. He wanted to reach out and pull Dean into the hug that he so desperately needed. But there was a fire and who knows how many other walls between them, so he said nothing.

They shared the silence as the fire died down. Exhausted, hungry, and homesick, John curled up to its fading warmth. “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home,” he whispered, trying anyway to click his heels together. As he fell into sleep, he thought he heard the words echo in Dean’s voice.

When the sun rose, the fire had turned to ash and Dean was gone.

Was he even real? he asked Harvey.

_You remember him, said Harvey. I suppose that’s all that counts._

“Yeah.” John breathed. There was a sharpness to the air, the hint of autumn on the horizon.

_The Wraith will be here soon._

John fingered Angela and Whitney and looked up to the sky, cluttered by trees but still vibrant and still there in the early morning light. He hoped Dean had made it back to his brother. Believed it. Because if he did then maybe, _maybe_, someday he would make it home, too.


End file.
